Your meat habits are killing the planet

PUT up your hand if you enjoyed a steak for dinner last night. Or maybe a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise. A veal schnitzel? Or sausages and mash? If you cared at all about our planet you had better make sure tonight's dinner is completely meat free.

That’s the advice of Professor Mark Sutton a scientist from the United Nations Environment Program who has told the world we all need to become "demitarians" – that means eating half the amount of meat we’re currently consuming - before it costs us the planet.

According to Dr Sutton our love of meat is not only selfish, it’s fatal. Why? Well, it’s an ugly picture. Apparently we eat significantly more meat than people who lived one to two generations before us. This demand for meat has doubled the amount of grain needed to feed the cattle. In order to keep up with this demand, farmers are relying on pesticide and fertilisers to speed up the grain production. These fertilisers and pesticides are polluting our atmosphere and running into the ocean, killing off fish and even threatening the lifecycle of bees.

Professor Sutton said we also need to make simple changes to current farming methods, like storing fertilisers more securely and capturing greenhouse gas emissions from their production.

According to the UN research these straightforward changes could cut nitrogen use by 20m tonnes and save billions of dollars per year.

Now for the good news. Chicken and pork are considered more "efficient meats" to farm because they grow quickly and farmers can also use the manure. Plus, to make a real difference you only have to cut your meat eating habit by half. Professor Sutton advises filling half your regular dinner plate with vegetables and a third of the meat that you’re used to eating.

"Eat meat, but less often – make it special. Portion size is key. Many portions are too big, more than you want to eat," said Professor Sutton.

The UN report also advocates people in wealthier parts of the world offset increased animal protein in the diets of poorer and developing countries.

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